Opinion: The Most MMA Event of the Year

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of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of
Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company,
Evolve Media.

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Event of the year it was not, but by the end of 2017, you’ll be
hard-pressed to find a card more MMA than UFC
210 on Saturday in Buffalo, New York.

Let’s take a minute to unpack that idea first, since saying that an
MMA event was “so MMA” -- and the fact that almost everyone
immediately knows what that means -- is telling. It hints at the
bizarre, sometimes horrible and often frustrating things we expect
from this sport. It’s a particular feeling in the MMA community,
somewhere between victimhood and resignation, over-salted with
well-earned cynicism. When hyped fights fall through last-minute
due to freak injury, a United States Anti-Doping Agency flag for
“dick pills” or someone slipping in the bathtub during weigh-ins,
or when impossibly bad scorecards turn up after a fight, the most
accurate, most succinct way to describe that feeling is to say it’s
“peak MMA.” Fighting is a weird and crazy sport, so we expect weird
and crazy things to happen.

Though co-main eventer Gegard
Mousasi made some fight-week ripples by vocalizing unapologetic
opinions about his paystubs -- a point of interest compounded by
the fact that the top-5 middleweight’s bout against Chris
Weidman was the last on his contract -- the real ridiculousness
started at the weigh-ins. Strawweight Pearl
Gonzalez was reportedly removed from her fight after hitting
weight but not because of a failed drug test or any of the other
usual suspects; she has breast implants, which are barred by the
New York State Athletic Commission in boxing. She was never
officially pulled from the fight and everything ended up getting
squared with the commission, but the episode was a portent of just
how MMA this card would turn out (online betting).

Then there was “Towelgate.” Daniel
Cormier has spent his career fighting uphill, never quitting,
embracing the grind, always wearing the impossible on his chin
before proving the critics wrong. To many he’s an inspiration, and
his overcoming-the-odds mantra inhabited a new, surprising and very
MMA soma at UFC 210. After weighing in at 206.2 pounds, he had a
few minutes to drop the weight to make it an official title
defense. Somehow, he shed 1.2 pounds in 2.5 minutes. Though he was
battling against both math and physical reality, he
embraced the grind by pushing down on the towels in front of
him, displacing the pull of gravity onto the towel and allowing
an MMA miracle to take place. Currently suspended Jon Jones said
it was the dirtiest thing he’d ever seen, with no hint of irony.
UFC 210 was off to a good start. It didn’t get any less weird on
fight night.

One-time middleweight title challenger Patrick Cote
dropped a decision to Thiago Alves
and promptly retired afterwards. It was surprising but not terribly
unexpected, either. The career gatekeeper has been a pioneer for
Canadian MMA, but at 37 years old, it seems like a good time to
hang up the gloves for “The Predator.” Still, it was a weird turn
of events considering he never announced anything beforehand, and
on most other fight cards, it would have been one of the bigger
stories to emerge. Not on the night of Weidman-Mousasi, though.

In a highly anticipated middleweight showdown between former
Ultimate Fighting Championship titleholder Weidman and former
Strikeforce
and Dream champ
Mousasi, everything started out normal enough. Weidman controlled
the first round with takedowns while Mousasi had his moments of
striking success. It looked as if either Weidman would win via
grappling dominance or Mousasi would win via striking superiority.
Neither was the case.

In a regulatory meltdown, Mousasi hit Weidman with knees that
looked illegal at first but turned out to be completely legal since
Weidman’s hands weren’t on the ground when the knees landed.
Referee Dan Miragliotta stopped the fight and gave Weidman time to
recover, thinking the knees were illegal. Then, defying New York
State Athletic Commission rules, he consulted video replay to
discover that the knees were in fact legal. Meanwhile, Weidman
milked his extra time to recover after being told he was allowed to
do so. Doctors came in to check on him while the powers that be
scrambled to figure out the correct protocol. At long last, it was
determined that taking a timeout after a legal strike was cause to
call the fight, which is true in the most legalistic reading of the
rules, but it reeked of unfairness and human error. Nobody in or
out of the cage wanted to see the fight end like that.

The situation bears commentary, and no doubt there will be an
abundance of it in the coming days. Ultimately, it was most
frustrating because it wasn’t really anyone’s fault. Sure, the ref
made the wrong call, but in the middle of a fight, that’s nearly
impossible to get right. He then did the right thing by checking
his work on video replay, but the right thing was also against the
rules. Bound by the rules -- and, by the way, the “hands down
equals man down” rule is stupid to begin with -- the correct thing
to do, then, was call the fight. It was a multifaceted but also
completely honest chain reaction of mistakes. Alas, Weidman dropped
his third straight fight and second in his home state, and Mousasi
gained very little bargaining leverage in his final contracted
fight. It was a train wreck, and while you’d have to have zero
emotive capacity to not feel bad for the parties involved, at the
same time the whole thing was absurd to the point of being comical.
It was a true “only in MMA” kind of moment.

The debacle was hard to top, but the main event would be damned if
it wasn’t going to try. Anthony
Johnson broke the ice, employing the least predictable game
plan outside of butt-scooting by taking it to Cormier with
wrestling. It stunned everyone, including Johnson’s corner and, I’m
willing to bet, Johnson himself. While he did have some success,
winning the first round on all three judges’ scorecards, he
eventually succumbed to the same fate he did the first time he met
Cormier. To quote Johnson’s longtime striking coach Henri Hooft,
who seemed more frustrated than anyone by what he witnessed: “Why?
Why the [expletive] does this happen every [expletive] time, man?
Crazy.”

After the fight, Cormier did the chivalrous thing and allowed his
defeated opponent to speak to Joe Rogan first. Johnson went and
retired on us. Johnson, the consensus second-best fighter in the
light heavyweight division right now, the in-his-prime knockout
juggernaut who has defeated the top three fighters ranked under him
in a combined eight minutes -- that Johnson retired out of nowhere.
It was somewhat moving, though mostly surprising, and it instantly
sparked speculation as to whether or not Johnson’s retirement had
something to do with his game plan and what he planned to do next.
Run a gym? Invest in yoga mats? Of course not; this is MMA. Rumors
quickly circulated that he was going to play in the NFL, though
those were unfortunately shot down by Johnson himself. The mystery
persists.

Cormier, too, was in rare form after the fight, looking more
comfortable than ever playing the villain. He trash talked Jimi Manuwa
before making his way to old nemesis Jones, doing so with more
old-man style and swagger than ever; and yet he was still booed
mercilessly by the majority of the arena. The defending champ just
can’t win with the fans, but that’s a small grievance to have when
he continues to win in the cage.

There’s still a lot of 2017 left, but this one was a real gem. UFC
210 was a perfect storm of human absurdity and entertaining
intervention from the MMA gods. It’s hard to determine whether it
was a gift from them or a sacrifice to them. Regardless, it was
relentlessly ridiculous and chaotic. It was so MMA.

Hailing from Kailua, Hawai’i, Eric Stinton has been contributing
to Sherdog since 2014. He received his BFA in Creative Writing from
Chapman University and graduate degree in Special Education from
University of Hawai’i. He is an occasional columnist for Honolulu
Civil Beat, and his work has also appeared in The Classical. You
can find his writing at ericstinton.com. He currently lives in Seoul with his
fiancé and dachshund.